No Business of Mine

I shook my head. “Oh, no, it wasn’t,” I said gently. “Let’s go back a bit.” I slid off the table, began to pace up and down. “Let’s go back to the time when the American soldiers were being repatriated. Before then, Bradley had been content to make a big profit by selling bad hooch and fleecing the boys in any other way he could think up. But when they began to leave, his profits shrank. He had to think up some other way of making money. Apart from running gaming-tables, he also decided to go in for large-scale robbery. George Jacobi was an expert in this line. Bradley hooked up with him, and the Allenby robbery was planned. About this time Netta was married to Bradley and Jacobi married Selma. Allenby’s place was near Lakeham, and Bradley killed two birds with one stone by buying the cottage at Lakeham. The robbery was organized from the cottage, and he also had a love nest for Netta and himself. Mrs. Brambee, Jacobi’s sister, undertook to run the cottage for them. The robbery was successful, and the next move was to find some way to sell the loot. The stuff was too hot; neither Bradley nor Jacobi had the nerve to put it on the market. They sat on it, hoping that it would cool off. While waiting, they quarrelled over the split, and one night Bradley killed Jacobi in the Club, and dumped him in a Soho street.”

“Is this guesswork or have you proof?” Corridan asked.

“It’s guesswork,” I admitted, “but she’ll talk before long. They always do.”

Corridan glanced at Netta, grunted. “Go on,” he said.

“We’ll leave Jacobi’s death for a moment and talk about Littlejohns,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “It’s important because it decided me that Netta wasn’t the Netta I used to know, and that I couldn’t let her get away with murder. I liked Littlejohns. He had guts, and besides, he was working for me. I had told him all I knew about the case, and he had spotted something I missed. He realized that Selma Jacobi figured somewhere in the case, and that she could very well be the dead girl in Netta’s flat as well as the dead girl in the cottage at Lakeham. He hadn’t seen Selma, but I had seen the dead girl. He wanted to surprise me, poor little guy. He found out where Selma used to live and went there in the hope of finding a photograph of her. He had planned to present me with the photograph, and when I had identified it as the dead girl, he was going to spring his surprise. He found the photograph. A scrap of it remained in his fingers when I found him. But Netta caught him. She realized that he was on to her, and to save her skin, she killed him. That’s something I can’t forgive, so I trapped her into thinking I was going to get her out of the country, knowing she’d try to smuggle Allenby’s loot out with her.”

“That still doesn’t explain how you knew she had the loot,” Corridan said, frowning. “You say this Peter French killed Selma Jacobi?”

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t say that. Netta told me Peter French killed Selma. But that’s a lie. Peter French knows nothing about this business at all. He was a stooge, put up to lead me away from the real killer.”

Netta got slowly to her feet, her face ghastly. Corridan took a step forward.

“Then who killed Selma Jacobi?” he demanded.

“The same person who killed Madge Kennitt,” I said, moving across to the kitchen door. “Let me introduce you.” I jerked open the door, stood aside. “Come on out,” I said. “You’ve been in there long enough.”

Detective-Inspector O’Malley and three plainclothes dicks moved into the room. They looked at me, at Corridan, at Netta.

“That’s the guy who killed Selma Jacobi and Madge Kennitt,” I said, jerking my thumb at Corridan.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I expect you to exercise tact and control with Harry Bix,” I told Crystal as I piloted her across the Savoy lobby to where Fred Ullman and Bix were examining the latest novels on the bookstall. “He’s the kind of wolf who knows all the ankles. Don’t encourage him, and if you don’t stray away from me you should be safe enough.”

Crystal said, “Shouldn’t you have brought your poke bonnet and tambourine? Who wants to be safe, anyway?”

By this time Harry Bix had seen us, and nudging Ullman, he fingered his tie, giving us a loud hello.

“Well, well,” he said, advancing to meet us. “Bluebeard does it again. How you collect these juicy dames beats me. You must have a fatal attraction or something.”

I sighed. “Crystal, this is Harry Bix. Don’t trust him. Even the wool he’ll try to pull over your eyes is half cotton. Harry, this is Miss Godwin. I’ll trouble you to keep your hands in your pockets while you talk to her, and just to keep the record straight, she is my property. The gentleman with the bags under his eyes, lurking in the background, is Fred Ullman. Fred, Miss Godwin.”

Ullman said how do you do, looked a little bored, but Bix elbowed him farther into the background, beamed at Crystal.